I’ve just finished plate three of the Bargue drawings, and I’m realising that there’s more to this than meets the eye – mainly because I steamed straight in without actually finding out how to copy the Bargue plates first.
The difficulties I’ve had with them have come down largely to two things, bad technique and bad prints.
Bargue Drawings Copying Technique
Finally, half way through plate three, I though it would be a good idea to read the book and find out if I was copying the drawings correctly.
I wasn’t.
Most of the drawings in the book have one or two schematic drawings next to the finished version, intended to show you how to break down the drawing into its main building block shapes, which you can then refine down to get the finished drawing.
I’ve been merrily copying the schematics as well as the finished drawings. Of course that just means that I’ve done more practice than I really needed to, and that’s a good thing really. It’s not how quickly I get through the plates that counts, it’s how much I learn from them.
I was copying the drawings mostly standing at the easel, judging distances by eye, where the book recommends the sight-size method, standing back and measuring with a plumb line. This is the atelier method of studying from casts. Also I wasn’t using construction lines, except where I really felt I had no choice. When I did I thought I was cheating, but in fact you’re supposed to use the construction lines supplied in the schematic. It makes life a bit easier at least!
Here’s a brief run down of the technique the book recommends, step by step:
- Tape up the drawing and your paper side by side, on a vertical drawing board at about head height. You’ll be drawing standing up.
- Tape up a plumb line so it hangs vertically down the middle of the drawing, in the same position on the drawing as the vertical construction line on the schematic. Now draw a corresponding vertical line down the middle of the paper.
- Stand back a given distance from the drawing, say six to ten feet. Mark where you’re standing with some tape on the floor. Always view the drawing and measure from this same point, viewing it from a different angle may distort the relationships between your measurements.
- Pick out the highest point on the original, and sight across the drawing to the plumb line. From that point, sight across to your paper and judge where the corresponding point would be on your vertical construction line. You can use another plumb line held horizontally for this. With your eye fixed on the spot on your paper where your mark is going to go, walk over and mark it.
- Go back to your viewing point, and see how close you are. Keep adjusting till it looks right.
- Once you’ve got the vertical measurement, unless the point is on the construction line, you need to get the horizontal measurement for it, i.e. how far away horizontally is it from the vertical construction line. Do this by holding your hand-held plumb line, a ruler, or whatever, horizontally, and judge the distance on the original between the point and the vertical construction line. As before, walk over and mark it on the drawing, adjust and correct as necessary, but only look at the drawing from your spot marked on the floor.
- Do the same with the lowest point on the drawing, and for the furthest left and furthest right points. Join the four points.
- Now you have the basic dimensions of the drawing. Don’t move on until you’re sure those points are right. Then you can start adding more points, describing the main shapes of the drawing. Use the schematic to pick out points to measure to.
- Carry on adding points and drawing the shapes outlined by them, gradually refining the drawing, working from larger shapes to smaller, until the outline is done.
- Adding tone would come next. I can’t say much about that yet since I’ve only just started doing it on plate three. Guaranteed it’s not going to be simple figuring out how though.
Enlarging the Plates
I think it’s important to copy the Bargue plates full size, the size they were meant to be copied. That’s somewhere in between A3 and A2. Even if you don’t want to copy the plates actual size, they’ll need to be set up on an easel if you’re going to copy them in the recommended manner. That still means copying and printing them.
So far I’ve had laser copies done, but when they are enlarged to full size, the quality suffers quite badly. Mostly in the areas of dark tone, the sensitivity isn’t there and you get a dark blob of one overall tone instead of the variegated tones on the original plate.
I’ve only just noticed this since I’ve just finished plate three and it’s the first one to include tone. After finishing the plate, (which took me a good thirty or so hours,) I looked at the plate in the book and again and realised that I’d lost a lot of detail on my laser copy. The problem with this is that I believe that this course is very carefully put together in a progression, especially at the start.
The book says you can do them in any order, but I disagree. Plate one was just schematics. Plate two added more finished outlines to the schematics. Plate three added tone to the line drawings, just the areas of the darkest shadows, no mid tones yet. Plate four adds mid tones, they are basically full tone drawings at this point. It’s an obvious progression. I have a strong feeling that if I don’t get each stage right I’ll be scuppered on the next one, so that’s why it bothers me that my reproductions are not good.
I need to find a way round this before I go any further. My plan at the moment is to take some digital shots of the plates, enlarge them to the correct size on the PC, then take them to the printers and see what the best quality they can do is. I suspect it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg to get a decent number of the plates done that way, but at least I’m working so slowly on them that the cost will be spread over a very, very long period.
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Hi Paul, at the Academy of Realist Art, where we practice the Bargue drawings, we work from a larger photocopy for the early stages of the schematic, and the articulation ( refinement stage), but when it comes to rendering the values, we only refer to the original plate.
The original pages from the book are quite small, as you know, but you have to use them to get the ntended range of values.
Instead of struggling with the heavy open book, the school has removed the plates from the book. they are laminated and kept in a 3 ring binder for this purpose.
The books are expensive, but a used paperback version of the book makes itnless painful to cut apart. I have recently heard that the Dahesh Museum has republishing the book in large format ( just the front section), in answer to this problem. I can’t recall the cost. Will get back to you on that.
Hi Liz, thanks a lot for the comment, that’s very interesting. Yes, I cut up my hard backed copy and it was painful but it was worth it! I’m glad to hear there are second soft back copies around now.
I really like the idea of using a combination of cheaper photocopies and the original plates. I got my blow-ups done on a dye sublimation printer and whilst the quality was as good as the original, the cost per plate was more than your average art book.
Also that’s excellent news that the Dahesh museum are going to start doing large format copies of the plates fro part 1 – I wonder if they’ll be selling them individually? Realistically speaking, people are only ever going to do a few of these plates since they take so long to do. When I first got the book I seriously considered doing them all but that would take years. And years. And years. 🙂
Hi Paul. Eeeks, that’s expensive for those copies! Selling the larger format plates individually is a such a grand idea. Clever man!
In case anyone is interested in having a go, without spending a penny, this link carries a free download of the Bargue plates:
Hi Liz,
Sorry I had to edit your comment and take the link out.
You can’t actually download the Bargue book from that page, all it has are affiliate links to Amazon to buy the book – i.e. they get a cut of any purchase made at Amazon through their links.
They’ve also stolen my review and put it through some word replacement software then added it as a comment to try and get some search engine traffic to their page.
I know you left the link in good face, and thanks for doing it, but I’ve had to take it out – it would be infringing copyright anyway to supply it for free download!
P.S. that was meant to say ‘good faith’ not ‘good face’ 🙂
Sorry to hear about this, Paul, and the trouble it has caused you. It was indeed done in good faith. Of course its best to always be leery of any free sites, and respect copyrights.
Practicing art is sadly, sometimes an expensive journey.
They stole your review of the barge book, on your site?
No problem at all Liz, I know you were being helpful.
Yes, they nicked my review. It’s not the first time – someone once took it and posted it in its entirety as a review on Amazon under their own name! Much easier than taking the trouble to write your own I guess 🙂
Please don’t stop adding any useful things just because of that though, I do really appreciate you doing it and other readers will too.
Thank you so much, for that, Paul. I felt so bad last night.
I really hope I can continue to share things i find helpful. Ill be really careful about links from now on. It’s pretty scary out there.
Folks, anyone out there, trying to become a better artist, please don’t be shy about sharing your comments here. We’re all in it together.
Have passed on your blog and specific articles to my friends at school! What you cover here is so useful and so similar to what we do.
There is so much reading to do when you start on this sort of journey, and it is so helpful to find your site, where you have already digested seminal books and methodologies, and give good direction for growing. Im also an art school drop out (ontario college of Art), and have returned to wanting to learn to draw and paint properly later in life, so there is a lot of catching up to do.
You are so right about art being a craft that needs regular exercise, that its not about being talented.. can you imagine what a benefit this blog would be to young people starting out? Readers, please pass this blog on to any young people who are interested in learning to paint and draw. Im going to do the same. get them started on the right path, and train them early!
I really like the name of the blog too, Paul, “Learning to See”, which really explains so much. Your blog is truly a treasure.
Sir,
Although the course is intended to copy the lithographs with vine charcoal but the author of the book on page no. 23, third line of first paragraph under materials suggest to reserve ” charcoal pencils” for finishing.
So my question is are charcoal pencils used for making hard crisp lines or just for shading(values)? Also please tell me can I get hard thin lines with my charcoal willow? if not then how? because I’m unable to do that. BTW I use only medium charcoal willow.
Thank You
Hi Arvind,
I use willow charcoal. You can use smooth sandpaper to sharpen it to a fine point. You have to sharpen repeatedly as you work, but you can get fine lines that way.
Paul,
Have you heard of Nitram charcoal “batons”? They’re like pencils you can sharpen on a sanding pad to a fine point. They also make holders (like lead holders) so virtually nothing is wasted.